


The End O't

by Quillori



Category: April Come She Will - Simon & Garfunkel (Song), Inspired by Music - Fandom, Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:56:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11019522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori





	The End O't

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiraMira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMira/gifts).



It makes a right pretty scene, the April rain, falling silver from the sky. The winter rains, now they’re a different thing, heavy and real, and turned to snow as like as not long before you light the midwinter candles or burn the sacred tree. Even when winter’s over, well and truly gone, the sky is metal grey, and the rain is wet and cold, and nothing to make songs about. 

But then the spring comes in, and perhaps it comes from the other land, where it is always spring, but howsoever it is, the land itself blushes and colour comes creeping into things, and sometimes the breeze is almost warm. No one feels much in winter, not if they can help it, for what is there to feel but cold, and hunger, and longing for the sun? Mayhap the welcome warmth of a fire, or a good meal on a cold day, but that's little enough to set against day after day of drear and dark. But then there is that hint of warmth, and the snows melt, and the streams fill, clear and cold, but gurgling and laughing as they tumble down the hills; and the scent of good brown earth rises up, and there's grass to tread underfoot, grass and mud, but it's a change from snow, and a promise of better things to come. And sometimes, when the light comes just so, slanting between the trees (still bare, but already there is the faintest haze of green), sometimes the light catches the rain, and makes it glow. Everything is young, and growing, and full of promise.

Well, that's when he met her, of course. I could have told him not to go wandering the fields alone in April, but you might as well hold your peace, for never yet did a young man or woman want such advice from their elders, although we might rightly be supposed to know well what comes of spring wandering. She was a right pretty thing, though, I'll grant her that, with laughing eyes and a little, heart-shaped face. At least, that is how she looked to me; who is to say how she looked to him, and I never asked, for some things should stay private. 

And so May came in, and the flowers, and the bird song, and the counting days where we reckoned up our rents, and he came to me to ask my blessing, saying he'd found the wife of his heart, gentle and sweet as the souffing breeze. I'd not put my trust in the wind, myself, for sure it's nice enough one day, but sure another it's cruel and bitter: but then, he wasn't asking for my trust, and a blessing's nothing but good wishes, come down to it, and those I've got enough and to spare.

Now the counting days I mentioned, it may be you don't have them, for I think they're a thing of the borderlands, where we owe our debts both ways, being neither quite the one thing nor the other. There is the price we owe for spring, for the life that comes back and the growing season; and then there is the price for winter, for not drifting slowly deeper into that land where the trees flower eternally, and there is no fruit.

It's the day after a counting day we like to hold weddings (funerals too): I've never been right sure in my mind whether we hold them then to give the couple as long as possible before the next day, or to ensure they're still mindful of the last. Well, he married her, although anyone could have told him there was no point, except of course that he would not listen. I think she knew, though, for as the days grew longer and hotter, the sun burned away her sweetness, and she took to prowling, so you never knew where you might come across her - in the woods, by the river, in the barn, in the neighbour's attic - as though she'd lost something she had to find. It did no good to lock her in, though I'm sure he tried it (they always do), for she could slink through the shadows between the door and the wall, sly and slender as a dream. And like as not one of us would let her out anyway, for it seemed a cruelty to keep her trapped, even if she had nowhere to go.

Nowhere to go, but she tried anyway, as the summer heat dried up the land, as the clouds gathered on the mountain top, as the harvests and the mists and the counting days of autumn drew near. A shaft of sunlight, the moon reflected in the well, the scent of ripening fruit, the hum of bees - she tried them all, desperate to escape; but slim and wise enough to slip shadow to shadow on land is not light enough to climb a sunbeam, or to be carried by the litanies of the bees, or rise up on the heady incense of the waiting harvest. And so she was still here when autumn came.

It went hard for him. I think perhaps it's worse for those who are left with nothing but memories. Young girls who go walking in the April fields may hope for a child, when the year is past, and sure it's no easy life without a husband to help, but we all do our bit, grannies and aunties and sisters, and besides, hard work is a sovereign remedy for grief. But to be left with nothing but memories... Well, I was left with those myself, in the end, but I had a heart for autumn, and chose accordingly: for me there would be no man of the silver rains and the wild spring flowers, but a solid, steady, mortal man, and when he died I had the memories of a lifetime. She had a lovely heart-shaped face, and her eyes were always laughing, right to the end, but she was never substantial enough to cast a shadow, and surely her memory is no more than the memory of a dream.


End file.
